Drive Highway 28 through Crystal Bay this summer and you will pass two fenced casino-hotel properties along the same short stretch of shoreline. Both sat empty for more than a decade. Both have been promised a comeback so many times that most locals stopped believing the renderings years ago.
This year, for the first time in a long while, the two stories actually split. One property has excavators on it. The other just went back to the bank.
Two Fences, Two Very Different Springs
The Cal Neva and the old Tahoe Biltmore anchor the same small casino corridor that once made Crystal Bay a destination in its own right, alongside the still-operating Crystal Bay Club. The Cal Neva dates to 1926. The Biltmore opened in 1948. Both eventually closed for good, the Cal Neva in 2013 and the Biltmore in 2022, and both have been the subject of multi-year redevelopment plans that residents have watched rise and stall more than once.
For most of the past decade you could describe the two projects with the same sentence: stuck, underfunded, waiting on the next announcement. That is no longer true. As of this summer, one site is under active construction with a signed financing package behind it. The other is sitting with a dilapidated main building, a fresh change of ownership, and no public timeline at all.
What's Actually Happening at the Cal Neva
In April 2026, the developer behind the Cal Neva closed a $298 million financing package to fund the restoration, now branded Lake Tahoe Proper Resort & Casino. The capital stack includes a $223 million C-PACE loan from Nuveen Green Capital, described by commercial real estate coverage as the largest C-PACE financing in Nevada and the first ever recorded in Washoe County, paired with a $75 million construction loan from Banc of California.
That money is already visible on the ground. A Las Vegas Sun report from April 2026 described the property alive with heavy machinery moving dirt, a sound the shoreline hasn't heard in years. The team behind the current push has been reported under the name Realberry, a Denver-based real estate investment firm, continuing the effort that Denver-area developer McWhinney began when it bought the 13-acre property from Larry Ellison in April 2023.
The scope has grown well past a casino relaunch. The historic Indian Room is being restored as a Grand Lodge space with a 40-foot stone bar built around the fireplace marking the actual California-Nevada state line. Plans also call for a 40,000-square-foot wellness sanctuary with a spa, cold plunge pools, red light therapy rooms, and an indoor padel court, alongside a restored Circle Bar and a 225-seat theater. That direction lines up with a detail from 2023, when McWhinney first floated Proper Hospitality as the eventual operator. The Lake Tahoe Proper name suggests that plan held.
Room counts have moved too. Reporting in 2024 described 164 hotel rooms in the tower plus 52 villas, a total of 216 keys. The April 2026 announcement puts the total closer to 197 guest rooms. If you last looked at renderings a year or two ago, the numbers you remember are already out of date.
The original goal was to reopen by 2026, the resort's 100th anniversary since it was built in 1926, ideally timed to Frank Sinatra's birthday. Developer Jason Newcomer admitted last August that "we realized that's too ambitious, and we want to do this right." The current target is a late 2027 opening. One tangible benefit for residents in the meantime: the project includes a planned bike path connecting Crystal Bay to Kings Beach, a piece of infrastructure that will outlast whatever the resort ends up being called.
The Building Down the Road Went Back to the Bank
The old Tahoe Biltmore tells a different story this year. Newport Beach developer EKN Development Group bought the property in 2021 for roughly $56 million and kept it open briefly before closing it for good on April 30, 2022. Later that year, EKN signed a brand and management agreement with Hilton to build Waldorf Astoria Lake Tahoe on the 15-acre site.
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency approved a revised plan in April 2023 that cut the project's density nearly in half, from 334 units down to 177, including 76 hotel rooms, 22 hotel lock-offs, 36 hotel residences, 25 full-time or vacation residences, and 18 previously built units at Granite Place. Demolition of the Biltmore's cottages followed in 2023 after asbestos abatement, but the main lodge building is still standing and, as of April 2026, remains extremely dilapidated.
The financing has not held. EKN defaulted on an $85 million loan in April 2024, and a foreclosure auction was scheduled before the default notice was rescinded that October. The reprieve didn't last. Washoe County Recorder's office records show that nine parcels tied to the Waldorf Astoria project were sold at a trustee sale on July 15, 2025, going back to Lake Tahoe Partners LLC, described in the sale record as the property's original benefactor. No new construction timeline has been publicly announced since.
Here's how the two projects compare as of this summer:
| Cal Neva / Lake Tahoe Proper | Old Biltmore site | |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership as of mid-2026 | Denver-based development team (reported as Realberry, successor to McWhinney's 2023 purchase) | Lake Tahoe Partners LLC, reacquired through foreclosure |
| Latest milestone | $298 million financing package closed, April 2026 | Nine parcels sold at trustee sale, July 15, 2025 |
| Visible site activity | Heavy equipment, grading, utility work | Fenced and vacant, main building still standing |
| Target opening | Late 2027 | No public date |
Why the Old Casino Model Died Here First
Both properties struggled for the same underlying reason before either developer showed up. Jim Kelley, who has owned Jim Kelley's Tahoe Nugget with his brother since 1993 after his father opened it in 1961, has put a number on what happened to the corridor: North Shore gaming revenue peaked in 2003 and now sits at about 30 percent of that level. That decline explains why neither redevelopment plan is betting on a casino floor as the main draw. The Cal Neva's biggest new square footage is a wellness sanctuary, not a gaming pit, and the Waldorf Astoria plan leans on branded residences and a boutique room count instead of the 300-plus units originally proposed.
What's Still Open While the Fences Stay Up
None of this has paused daily life in the corridor. A short list of what's actually running right now:
- Crystal Bay Club Casino is still booking its live room, with a Sublime tribute act on August 29 and shows from The Yawpers, Petty Theft, Jackie Greene, and The Brothers Comatose running through September.
- Soule Domain, at the western entrance to town, has been run by Charlie Soule for 40 years. He has watched the corridor go from a strip of shops and casinos to one with boarded windows and empty lots, and the restaurant has kept its lakeside dinner service through all of it.
- Smoke Door, a Japanese restaurant that opened in July 2023, runs prix fixe menus ranging from $88 to $198, a sign that the corridor's food scene has kept investing even while its casino-hotels sat empty.
- Jim Kelley's Tahoe Nugget remains family-owned more than 60 years after it first opened.
What This Means If You Live Here
The mistake is treating "Crystal Bay redevelopment" as one story with one clock. It isn't. The Cal Neva has real money behind it now, visible construction, and a specific if delayed target of late 2027. Expect equipment noise and utility work near that site to be part of the neighborhood soundscape for at least another year. The old Biltmore site, by contrast, is back with an owner that hasn't announced new plans, and there's no indication of when or if visible work will resume there.
Meanwhile the restaurants, the casino calendar, and the daily rhythm of the corridor are running on their own timeline, independent of either project. If you're trying to read what any of this means for the neighborhood's trajectory or for property values along that stretch of Highway 28, that's a conversation worth having with someone who's watching both sites as closely as the businesses between them. Heather Bacon has spent two decades following development and permitting on Tahoe's North Shore and can walk you through what's actually changing here, not just what's been announced. Reach out to schedule a free consultation.
